Shock of His Life: Boat Sank Under Him

One minute, Don Bowen was cruising along in the 65-foot “Queen of the Sea,” heading for a cove where sea bass had been biting the week before.

The next minute, the boat had collided with a submerged rock. With its rudder snapped off and propellers broken, waves were taking it toward the rocky western side of Santa Catalina Island.

Twenty minutes later, pounding surf was reducing the boat to a mass of splinters, forcing Bowen, 37, of Bellflower, and his crewman, Don Gish, 40, of Torrance to abandon ship. They were rescued half an hour later by a Catalina harbor rescue boat; Gish suffered minor abrasions.

Fishermen at the 22nd Street landing in San Pedro described Monday’s accident as the first total loss within memory among the commercial sport fishing vessels that harbor there.

“I can’t recall one ever happening,” said Roger Hess, owner of the Encore and Charisma sportfishing and dive boats.

The accident was a shock to the Queen’s owner, John Dipley of Carson, who was not aboard the boat the day it sank.

“I have an invalid mother who needs 24-hour nursing care and now my entire income is gone,” lamented Dipley, 43, in a brief dockside interview Monday.

The distraught Dipley displayed a single spoke from the wheel of the Queen, which he was saving as a memento, nervously pounding it against the palm of one enormous hand.

Dipley, whose breadth of knowledge of local waters matches his Falstaffian girth, said that a $250,000 insurance policy will not cover $600,000 replacement costs.

But he added gamely that he will try to start again despite “the professional embarrassment” of the collision.

“The only thing I’ve ever done in my life is fishing,” he said.

As word of the Queen’s demise got around the dockside, the tightknit professional fishing fraternity--a group of men with weathered faces and perpetual squints not given to expressing emotions lightly--sympathized with Dipley.

“We do feel badly for John,” said Hess, as he sipped a beer in the cabin of the Charisma. “We’ll do what we can to get him going again.”

Bert Mikkelsen, owner of the Alter Ego and the Reel Hooker charter boats, said: “I hate to see John lose his boat. He is one of the better skippers here. He has quite a following.”

With Dipley attending to his ailing mother and unable to captain his charter boat, Bowen and Gish had set out Sunday night to fish for squid to sell as bait, and to try their luck at sea bass.

The collision occurred about 6:30 a.m. as Bowen was rounding the southern tip of Santa Catalina to the cove where sea bass had been plentiful, Bowen said Monday at the dock.

Submerged rocks that are visible at low tide as “boiling rocks” were hidden by high tide, he said.

“I came in a little close,” Bowen acknowledged.

After the collision, the Coast Guard received a Mayday from the Queen at 6:42 a.m. that the boat had gone aground at Mills Landing, which is about 3 1/2 miles south of Catalina Harbor, according to Chief Petty Officer Reid Crispino.

Bowen said the deck of the Queen was tilted at a 45-degree angle when he called for help.

Crispino said that the crew of Catalina Harbor Rescue No. 6, which arrived alongside the Queen at 7:05, maneuvered to within 30 feet of the disintegrating vessel and that Bowen and Gish jumped in the water and swam to safety.

At 9:35, a Coast Guard helicopter flew over; only wreckage was visible.

“I had the scare of my life,” a shaken Bowen said hours after the mishap.

“I have never been through that before and I never want to be through that again.”